Friends
Stocks continue to slide in today’s trading as concerns about slowing economies around the globe mount. Sure, central banks are ready and willing to continue the easy money policies of the past 10 years, but the worry is that we will continue to experience diminishing returns from those policies. We’ll continue to ask whether this is simply a logical pause point, given the gains that stocks experienced in the first 60 days of the year, or have we priced in a trade deal with China and the highs have been achieved for a while.
As for today, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 204 points to finish the day at 25,468. The S&P 500 was down 22 points to close at 2,749. Gold was down $2 to trade at $1,285 per ounce, while oil was up $.37 to trade at $56.59 per barrel WTI.
The consensus for tomorrow’s non-farm payroll numbers has dipped just a hair to 175,000 new jobs in February. The guess is that the unemployment rate will come in at 3.9%. Probably what is most important is wage growth and that is estimated to be about .2% and about 3.2% year over year. Let’s see what the report looks like and how the week finishes out tomorrow.
Have a nice evening everyone.
